


McDonald's

by writersblock101



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Athletic boys, Basketball Player! Tyler, Football Player! Josh, High School AU, M/M, One Shot, Stress, Studying, TOP au, eat breakfast kiddos, its important, school au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-08 17:27:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11651298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writersblock101/pseuds/writersblock101
Summary: The life of a student athlete is a struggle, but Tyler always knows how to help.





	McDonald's

Josh sighs heavily as he thinks about his AP Physics test tomorrow. He needs to study a lot. Usually physics comes easy to him, but this chapter, everything, even the math, has thrown Josh for a long, confusing loop. To make matters even worse, before he can go home and begin to take on the mess that is his physics, he has football practice first. 

To any student athlete, this is a manageable problem. It's the full season struggle of balancing school, athletics, and sleep, but for football players at his school, this task is especially tricky. In the morning, the boys are required to be at school at 6:00 AM to work out if they are unavailable for the 1st period weight lifting slot. In order to make it to school at 6, Josh wakes up at 5:30 every morning except Friday, game day. After working out, he has to survive a day of school which includes AP Physics, AP Statistics, and AP European History. Shortly following school is football practice. 

If one were to look at the football practice schedule, it would say football ends at 6:45 PM. In reality, on a good day, practice ends at 7:15. On a good day. Last week's game was a loss, but this Friday, the team and coaches are determined to rack up a win after losing the past two games. While this is a fantastic mentality and motivator, the wear and tear on the players begin to show through as the practices go longer and players grow more tired as the coaches strive for perfection in each play. 

It's been a long day for Josh, but it's not even halfway over. It's going to be an even longer night. 

* * *

Tyler frowns as he walks toward his car, his stressed boyfriend Josh on his mind. He works so hard to maintain his grades, take the high classes, and excel in his athletics. How he manages it is beyond Tyler. Some nights, he struggles with the double life of a student athlete and he doesn't even take APs! But he knows tonight and tomorrow are going to be horrible for Josh.

Knowing him, Tyler predicts that he will get home around 8:20 after hearing about how this week's practices are going, and will still need to eat dinner. By the time he and his family finishing eating dinner, it will be close to 8:40, then Josh will sit down to begin the  _ written _ homework due the next day. It'll be close to 10:00 when he will begin studying for his physics test. Usually, this isn't a bad time frame. Normally, he would study for, at the most, an hour if there were some unclear parts and be in bed by 11, but for this test, Josh has to start from scratch. He's been struggling for a week and a half to understand what they are covering, but neither the concepts nor the math are clicking in his mind, despite the homework, labs, or one on one time with teachers. While he's attempted to space out his studying over the course of a few days, he couldn't get it to click any other night, no matter how hard he tried or how many different ways he did it. But tonight, he had to find some way to begin to unravel the mess that will be on his physics test tomorrow. And it's going to take him a long time. 

Josh probably won't call it a night until 1:30 or maybe even 2:30 AM because he physically can't keep his eyes open long enough to read the material. Then he'll have to wake up at 5:30 to go put even more physical strain on a body that didn't recover from the previous day as well as mental strain. He's going to be a miserable zombie, and there's nothing Tyler can do to help. 

He's in Conceptual Physics at the normal junior level so he's no help for tutoring Josh. But maybe there is something Tyler can do... 

The brunette grins to himself as he opens his car door, a plan formulating in his mind. 

* * *

The clock on the wall now reads 7:20, 30 minutes until the bell rings, sending students to class. Josh has been sitting in the empty classroom, reading over his book for the past 20 minutes, but it's been 20 useless minutes. As he reads, Josh slowly begins to doze off and doesn't realize he has shut his eyes until he opens them once more. He knows the "studying" he's doing isn't helping, but Josh has to try something- He's failed everything in this chapter, he has to even it out with a good grade to prevent a major grind consuming the rest of the semester.

Blinking his eyes in attempt to keep himself awake, Josh sits up, staring down at the book, but his body begins to sway before Josh realizes it. 

* * *

Tyler opens the heavy school doors to find the halls sparingly littered with students. The bell doesn't ring for another 30 minutes so it's no mystery why such few students are in the school. Without even needing to ask anyone, Tyler knew exactly where he will find his boyfriend.

After going to his locker, Tyler heads for the empty classroom made available all periods of the day. To give the students somewhere to work quietly during unassigned or study halls, the school stocked a classroom with desks, extra textbooks, computers, and printers. It's the size of a regular classroom and a teacher is positioned in the room from 5:30 AM till 4:30 PM. Teachers sit in the rooms during planning periods and work while students quietly do their own work. Every morning, one of the math teachers, Mr. Tack, who arrives at the school at 5:30 and leaves right when school gets out (3:00), sits in the room. He's a morning person so he doesn't mind the early hours since he leaves the minute school gets out. 

Tyler's hunch is proven correct as he walks into the study hall classroom to find Josh slumped over his book, asleep. 

* * *

Josh opens his eyes at the sound of paper crunching. He sits up, not realizing he fell asleep to find a white McDonald's breakfast bag sitting on the open textbook and a warm cup of coffee placed on the desk. Standing in front of him with his own McDonald's bag and a can of Redbull is his boyfriend Tyler, a small smile on his face as he eyes his tired boyfriend.

"Oh my gosh, babe," He stands up, giving Tyler a quick peck. "You are the best," then sits down, unwrapping his breakfast. 

"I also brought you a Red Bull," Tyler informs him, pulling the familiar metallic can out of his backpack. 

Josh nearly cries with happiness. Tyler  even got him his favorite- a bacon, egg, and cheese bagel with a hashbrown. 

"How dij you knof I skiffed breaffast?" Josh asks, his words slurred by a mouthful of bagel. 

"I just know you that well," Tyler tells him as he pulls a chair up to the desk in front of him, sipping his own Redbull. "How late did you stay up last night?" 

Josh chews slowly, attempting to recall when he finally threw in the towel. 

"2:30," He responds sheepishly. 

"2:30?!" Tyler exclaims. "Josh!"

"I need to do well!" The junior insists. "I didn't know anything!" He looks down at his book, reading the material over once more as he eats, but Tyler pulls the book off his desk, closes it, and placed it in his lap. 

"Hey! Tyler- I need to study!" 

"Josh, you've studied enough. At this point, I don't think you can physically retain any more information. Right now, you're going to let yourself rest and eat breakfast, got it?" 

"But I-"

"No. No more studying." 

Josh sighs, then chuckles. 

"You're twisting my arm here," He jokes. 

"I know, it's absolutely heart breaking," Tyler rolls his eyes. "I got locked out of my house yesterday." 

Josh laughs. 

"What? How?"

"I uh... Dropped the key when I was unlocking the door then it disappeared," Tyler embarrassingly tells him. 

"It disappeared?" 

"I'm not kidding- it's freaking gone! My mom tried to look for it when she got home and she couldn't find it either!" 

"I am not surprised," Josh chuckles. "You would do something dumb like that."

"Hey, I brought your breakfast. You have to be nice." 

"Oh you poor thing, how dare that key runaway from you?'"

"Don't patronize me, Dun," Tyler sticks his tongue out at Josh who laughs in response. 

"How long were you locked out?"

"Until my mom got home."

"Why didn't you use the spare key?"

"We don't have a spare key outside the house."

"Wait- Outside the house?"

"Yeah, we have a spare key, but we keep it inside our house."

"Why? What good does a spare key inside the house do you when you drop your key and it "disappears"?" 

"It _did_ disappear! And we don't want some random dude coming into our house and stealing everything!" 

"That's why you hide it!"

"Where?"

"I don't know! You're the creative one, you can figure it out." 

"Thanks, babe," Tyler drawls sarcastically. 

**Author's Note:**

> Moral of the story: School is hard especially when you do something that isn't school. Remember to eat breakfast and don't stay up too late studying kiddos! (Stay up late doing other dumb stuff instead)
> 
> Hope you liked it! Let me know what you think!


End file.
